He hated coming here. It was not at all what he liked to spend his day doing, but he knew it needed to be done. The despair and anguish that hung thick in the air shook him to the core, and the more he frequented this place, the more he realised how much the Wizarding kind had lost their way.
Walking into the unassuming building, the bell on the heavy wooden door rang through the otherwise silent and almost empty hall.
Scooting around a burly man with a bald head and a thick mustache. He was big enough that he could probably bench press Severus with one arm behind his back and both eyes closed. The kind of man you wouldn't want to meet wandless down a dark alley at night on your lonesome.
"Back again?" The man's deep, gruff voice bit out harshly, staring him down critically.
Severus stopped on the spot and slowly turned on his heel, looking the man up and down.
"Obviously," he drawled slowly and wondered if he were as dumb as he looked.
"Don't you already have a harem of witches at home?" He snapped forcefully, pinning Severus under a heavy gaze.
"Variety is the spice of life," Severus bit back harshly and turning on his heel once more in an attempt to move along.
"You can't keep taking home the basket cases, Snape," the man warned gravely, slapping a large meaty hand on his shoulder.
"They aren't 'basket cases'," he retorted back with a quick roll of his eyes, biting his tongue hard so he didn't let slip when he really wanted to say to the uncultured brute.
He stopped and spun back around quickly, anger etched into every line on his face, and went to walk off once more but stopped as the other man talked once more.
"They are. They don't talk. Driven beyond insanity and still won't come around to our side. If you ask me, they are fit to be turned into werewolf chum and little else," he spat bitterly, nostrils flaring slightly as he spoke.
"They aren't insane." He exhaled sharply out of his nose trying to calm himself and not whip his wand out, aiming it between his eyes.
"They are quite the opposite. They are the most loyal to their cause. The strongest. If they haven't turned after what they have been put through to me that shows their bravery is beyond measure and strength you or I could only wish to possess," he hung onto the last s for a little longer than usual almost coming out as a slight hiss.
"A cause that no longer exists? Well, Good luck to you." The man shrugged his beefy shoulders and walked off without as much as a backward glance towards Severus, and for that he was thankful.
Severus walked down the long hallway, footsteps echoing off the empty walls as he did so, and pushed the door at the end open to a large room. He came here every Wednesday like clockwork. Nothing would stop him. Of course, it repulsed him that there was even such a place that existed that auctioned off Witches, Wizards, and Muggles alike to the highest bidders to do with as they pleased. Forcing them into slavery, torturing them into insanity, and raping them brutally.
It mattered not how they were treated, because they were seen as objects to do with as they pleased and not as the human beings that they were. Essentially, they were property and little more.
Severus was lucky that he could play right into Voldemort's hands and thus earned his freedom to live in the world as he liked but it wasn't the world he knew nor wanted to be in.
They rounded muggles up like cattle and sorted. They killed the elderly, and the disabled on the spot; they took the children to camps to be raised and molded into desirable slaves. Some for the affluent and wealthy, like the Malfoys and others for the lower class.
The younger population under forty were sorted and shipped off to breeding camps to ensure there was a steady supply of children to step into servitude for the Wizarding kind.
A handful of people who had magic within their lines, even generations back, were used to breed more Wizards and Witches hoping that the addition of extra magic to the bloodlines would in essence bestow magic upon the children produced.
The adults that could keep the world running were allowed some sort of freedom to keep living their lives under the heavy-handed watch of Death Eaters and Werewolves alike. They still needed farmers for food and textiles to create clothing; there was only so much magic could do, and it wasn't possible to keep creating food or clothing using magic alone.
They shipped anyone else that contributed nothing to society off to auction houses and sold to Witches and Wizards to do with as they wanted. Along with them, a small trickle of their own brethren came through. The beaten and the broken. The tortured, and the raped. The used up and the spat out. The ones that wouldn't bow down to Voldemort were often sent through beaten beyond recognition and so broken they were bordering on insanity, too good to kill but not good enough to keep himself, these were the ones Voldemort shipped out of his personal collection. The ones he hoped would somehow be utilized sexually and contribute to their dwindling society but without him having to directly orchestrate the logistics of it himself.
strolling along the wall of misfits and rejects. The untameable. The ones they couldn't turn to the dark side. They were all well underweight with hair that clung to blood-stained faces hiding swollen eyes and split lips. Bony arms covered in purple and black bruises leading to purple torsos and legs, they were wrapped in little more than tattered rags; they stood unmoving scared they would land another blow upon their skin. The next blow that might break them mentally and physically.
Each week he took one home, parting with his galleons for the pleasure of doing so.
"Back to add to your army, Severus?" Lucius Malfoy strode over, grey eyes boring into the man that stood before him.
"Something like that." He shrugged.
There was some bad blood between the two of them and Severus really couldn't stand the man any longer than he had to. Perhaps it was the way he flaked on him after the two had a pact to walk away from Voldemort no matter what happened, win, lose or draw no longer wanting to be dictated to by a maleficent master as puppets to his cause, but at the last second, he flounced like the pussy he was and bowed down at Voldemort's feet like he was worshipping a god from the heavens above.
"How many cretins do you need to warm your bed?"
"Who said they were warming my bed?" He titled his head in question. "You think I am playing hide the sausage with Minerva?"
"Well, what else would you be doing with a new witch every week? I don't know what you are in to… You might enjoy that type of thing. What will this week be, number four?"
"Yes. Not that it's any of your business." He snapped, turning away from the man to look a witch over momentarily before stepping away from her.
"So why do you need four witches?" Lucius pressed, trying to gain more information.
"Because I can have four witches. Maybe I want ten. Maybe I am forming an army of scorned witches with hatred flowing through their veins to revolt against the powers that be."
Severus was looking for someone. A particular someone and he would keep coming here until he sighted her. He knew from the tidbit of information that he had received from the last witch he purchased she would come through soon. It seemed because she was of undesirable blood; they wanted to torture her for longer but didn't want to kill because of the power she possessed, and the fact she had a uterus that potentially when mated with a Wizard would produce desirable offspring for their cause. They could eventually breed the filth out of the bloodline. If they sold her off, they could track her down later should the need ever arise.
Steps heavy on the worn wooden floor, he moved with haste through the lines of the beaten and the broken. Stopping every so often to get a closer glimpse of anyone who piqued his interest.
Of course, she would be hard to spot in the sea of the starved. They all looked the same when they were this malnourished, with hollow cheeks and hips poking out from their tattered underwear. Blood dried and staining their faces, gluing any wayward hairs that fell into it to their faces; some still bleeding heavily.
All hair looked matted when unbrushed for weeks or maybe more it would be a hard task to distinguish her from the birds nest that adorned her head; her trademark.
Sighing deeply he was quickly losing hope having only a small group in the back darkened corner to peruse before calling it quits, not laying his eyes on one damned witch or wizard that he knew.
Taking in a shuddered breath, he stepped into the dark corner holding a handful of captive, beaten and more pathetic than the rest. He stopped upon a girl, curls mattered beyond measure, blood-stained face adding colour to her otherwise porcelain white face. A thick leather dragon-hide collar fastened tightly around her neck with a thick chain trailing from it, locked to a shackle on the wooden floor. His heart simultaneously skipped a beat and broke in two at the pathetic sight before him.
The chain and collar unnecessary considering the poor girl could barely hold her own head up let alone leg it out of here even if she wanted to. She would blow over in the next breeze, she was that light.
Heavily hooded eyes blinked slowly as he pushed the hair out of her eyes. Her eye's void of any emotion it was evident that a broken soul lay deep within wanting nothing more than to give up and stop living.
It looked like her, but the desolate look deep within of a broken human almost put him off. She wouldn't have given up like this. She wouldn't have lost all hope. Would she?
"Granger?" He whispered close to her, hoping she would answer him but got nothing for his trouble.
"Hermione?" He pressed again, noticing this time her eyes flicked for but a fleeting moment. It was her.
"Want her, Snape?" Fenrir Greyback stepped out from a shadowy doorway, having watched the entire exchange between the two rather intently.
They appointed Fenrir as Voldemort's chief persuasion officer; aka top torturer. If he couldn't turn a Witch or Wizard to the dark, then no one could. It was his job to haul the unwanted ones off to the auction house to be rid of them.
"I won't pay much for her, look at the condition she's in. It will take me months to get her into a fit state to utilize." He lied. He had no plans for her other than to take her home and hopefully heal her back to the vivacious little heathen he once knew.
"I tell you what. Because I hate the little bitch with every fiber of my being, I will let you take her. She's not worth my time standing around waiting for the pittance I would get for her. Nobody wants a Mudblood, anyway, no matter how talented," he growled low in his throat.
Bending over, he pulled the chain from the shackle and thrust it at Severus so forcefully he stumbled backward a few steps before fully gathering the chain in his hands.
"She's a dud root, too, if that's what you want her for. At first, she used to fight. Had the spark you really want in a girl and would try to fight me left and right. Then over time she just laid there, the spark gone, and it was like fucking a corpse." Yellow eyes gazed at the girl once more as if reminiscing on the times he had violated her and a small smile tugged at his lips, exposing yellow, wolf-like teeth.
Snape wanted to retaliate. He wanted to get justice for the girl who couldn't fight for herself, but he knew it would jeopardize his position within their community and then he too would be here in her spot.
"You will need this too," he said gruffly. Rummaging through his pocket, he pulled out the girl's wand and thrust it at the man who pocketed it himself.
Silently he led her through the auction house like she was little more than an animal on a lead following behind its master. Through the crowd that was now gathering, he evaded the eye of Lucius Malfoy and paced quickly down the hall and outside. The grey clouds holding the sun captive a cold icy breezing whipped through the street he was standing on. Stopping, he cast a glance back toward the girl; she was shivering.
"Let me help you," he whispered gently. Long slender fingers reaching up to the buckle of her collar and made light work of undoing the clap and pulling it from her neck, leaving an angry red mark around the circumference of her neck.
Next, he pulled the outer robe of his ensemble off and draped it over her bony shoulders. It was no wonder she was freezing when she didn't have an ounce of fat on her to keep the warmth in.
He noticed her eyes watching him intently the whole time, flinching slightly with every movement he made. Of course, she would be nervous around him, she knew him as little more than a Death Eater and Voldemort sympathizer.
"Come, pet. We need to get you home."
A/N: I know what you are all thinking, "Oh no, she's started another story without finishing the others she started two years ago."
I am a trash human with a glutton for punishment. I'm an Aquarius, our minds are chaotic and we have several projects on the go. Don't blame me, blame the zodiac.
-Aliasmel1